Sixteen hours
by Insane Troll Logic
Summary: We’re going to have to quarantine you, Janice. Sixteen hours to be on the safe side. When that’s over, we forget this ever happened and get on with our lives. Mild JD/Cox.


(for the LJ community, zombie_fest)

**SIXTEEN HOURS**

**Hour Zero**

The needle fumbles out of shaking hands as the zombie lunges against its restraint. It's airborne for the barest fraction of a moment and then it impales itself in JD's left wrist.

Elliot looks at him, blue eyes wide under blonde bangs. "JD," she mutters. "JD, oh God I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"Somebody get Dr. Cox."

**Hour One**

"What do we know, Newbie? Just because you got stuck with the business end of a zombie needle doesn't mean you can just forget years of medical training."

"The disease is communicable by blood or saliva," JD recites listlessly. "Incubation time is between ten and fifteen hours in those who are alive. Minutes in the dead who have contracted the disease."

"We're going to have to quarantine you, Janice. Sixteen hours to be on the safe side. When that's over, we forget this ever happened and get on with our lives."

**Hour Two**

Turk walks into the room in a full containment suit and grabs his hand. "JD man, I just wanted to let you know this is all going to be all right."

He looks like Marty McFly in Back to the Future and JD puts on his best smile and says, "I know. Don't worry about me, C-Bear. I haven't had a chance to sleep since this thing started."

**Hour Three**

JD watches the news. There are riots in every major city, the hospitals are overrun with people trying to get treatment for loved ones who have been bitten and as a result, the ERs are almost worse off then the streets. It's been sixteen days since he last left the hospital. There is a helicopter that brings them supplies daily.

It hits him for the first time that he might never leave.

**Hour Four**

"JD," Elliot says. Her face is streaked with tears, her mascara running, her hair is coming out of its tie. "I'm so sorry, JD. I've been a wreck all this week. I already had three different patients rise up on me. Doug's first order of business in the morgue has started being removing the heads of dead patients."

"Elliot, it's not your fault," JD says. "You're a doctor." He sounds like Dr. Cox sometimes when he gets like this. It's a voice he reserves for when dealing with his new interns. "Deal with it and get back out there. I'll see you tomorrow."

**Hour Five**

The Todd waltzes into the room, green around the edges, with red leaking out of the gash on the stomach. But The Todd can't be here because JD brained him with an IV stand back on day one.

He lurches forward toward JD and raises a hitching hand up into the air. "Zombie five!"

**Hour Six**

He spends an hour panicking because somebody's missing. Somebody should have come to see him by now and doesn't remember Carla's gone until there's a Hispanic lady on television sobbing _de repente algo había cambiado en sus ojos y me atacó._

And then he remembers and wishes he could forget.

**Hour Seven**

JD stares at the clipboard.

The clipboard stares back.

"Fifty-three year old man, in good physical condition collapses on the way in from work today. No history of drinking alcohol abuse---"

"Dr. Cox?" JD says.

"I heard what you told Barbie. You're at work. Do your job."

**Hour Eight**

"What's got you so worked up?" Turk is in the suit again. Drumming the yellow-gloved fingers over the textbook.

"Dr. Cox gave me this patient he needed my help on."

Turk spins the paper around to get a good look. "JD, this guy died on my operating table last year."

**Hour Nine**

"You think I'm infected, don't you?"

"If you keep taking that tone of voice with me, Fanny, you're not going to have to worry if you're infected or not."

"Dr. Cox!"

"It doesn't matter what I think! They took that blood from a full-fledged zombie and it wound up in your wrist. If even a molecule got into your system, that's it, goodbye."

"They're working all over the country to find a cure."

"The virus is highly mutative and spreads through populations faster than any illness I've ever seen. They're not going to find a cure in the next six hours."

**Hour Ten**

At the trained zombie dancing circus JD, holds his severed, rotting left arm in his right as he does a tap number on top of a table. Dr. Cox whistles his approval.

The janitor lurches toward them holding a penny and moaning, "Scooter!"

Dr. Cox jump-kicks him in the face, effectively destroying the brain.

"Ta-da!" JD whispers to himself.

**Hour Eleven**

Dr. Cox has a stethoscope on his chest and a thermometer in his mouth. He's wearing the standard issue latex gloves but no other safety equipment.

"You're running a fever, Yolanda."

"You should put on the safety equipment," JD says. "The containment suit like Turk wears."

"I'm not in the business of terrifying my patients. Unlike some useless scalpel jockeys that shall remain nameless." He snaps off his gloves. "You're overworked and exhausted. Get some sleep and you'll be good to go in a few hours."

**Hour Twelve**

He bangs on the locked door. "My chart!" he screams and his voice is raw. "Someone let me look at my damn chart!"

**Hour Thirteen**

An orderly slips a note under his door. He reads the first line and tears it up into tiny pieces. He is sweating profusely and the tiny pile of paper shards in his hands is already disgustingly moist.

_Vanilla Bear,_ The note had read. _I wouldn't have made it this long without you._

He doesn't want to read Turks platitudes about God and the lesbian cloud and saying hi to Carla. It sounds too much like goodbye and _he's not ready._

Outside, the zombies moan.

**Hour Fourteen**

"You should take a blood test." The fever is raging his body and he alternates between periods of freezing and boiling. He doesn't know how much longer he can take this.

"You're infected or you're not." Dr. Cox says. His wild mop of curls is bobbing in vehement agreement. He hasn't shaved in weeks. "No blood test is going to change it. Besides, the labs are backed up beyond belief."

JD is infected. They both know it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

"Maybe if pathology can examine a sample in process of conversion, they might be able to synthesis a way to block progression and---"

"Damnit, Darcy, stop talking like you're a god-damn test subject because you're not."

**Hour Fifteen**

"You know I love you, right?" JD says. "And please don't make fun of me or anything but if it wasn't for the whole my saliva could infect you thing, I would totally be moving in for the smooches right now."

Dr. Cox steps forward and wraps him into a tight hug and JD knows he really is dying know, knows there is no coming back from this but for that single second, he doesn't care at all.

There something wet on his shoulder and JD doesn't even want to think about what it is because if Dr. Cox is crying he doesn't want to see. "Damnit, kid," Cox mutters into his scrubs. "Damnit, JD."

It goes on longer than the three second hug limit and that in itself is as much of an _I love you too_ as JD ever needed.

**Hour Sixteen**

Dr. Cox doesn't leave. There is a shot gun strapped to his leg under the lab coat. He takes it out, sets it on his lap, stares at JD and waits.

(end)


End file.
